the-mad-duchess:

Hey fellow Tumblr-Users,

after this post (quite unexpectedly) gained a lot of reblogs and questions, I dug around a little to try and find some information about the most common problems and issues happening currently (may 27th 2018, 15:30 Berlin time)

General information:

The new TOS is applicable to those inside the EU. Users outside of the Union don’t seem to have access to the options of choosing to restrict the access to their user data.

The changes are caused by companies having to abide the GDPR (general data protection regulation), a set of laws about the use of EU citizen’s personal data. Heres the official homepage and wikipedia page for further reading. The GDPR Hall of Shame collects examples of companies failing spectacularly at complying. Tumblrs mother company Oath is also featured.

I’m haven’t seen any new TOS!

Then you are likely not inside the area affected by the GDPR and can’t change the settings.

(Some users have recommended to try using a proxy server or vpn client to get access. Don’t ask me about whether that actually works or not, I’m in the EU and have no idea.)

Troubleshooting

I call this troubleshooting, but the problem actually lies with Tumblr, so there’s actually not too much users can do at the moment.

The first problem:

There is no actual way to switch off the options for data sharing. As soon as everythind is switched off and you leave the settings page, they all turn back on. This has happened to me several times, I’ve read about it happening to numerous times to people reblogging this post, and it’s frankly pretty fucking annoying. There’s a reddit thread about this problem as well.

It is NOT A USER PROBLEM but a technical problem from Tumblrs side. You are not doing anything wrong, it’s the sites fault.

I accidentally clicked OK without changing the settings! / I’m on mobile! What do I do?

I did some digging and found a page with instructions how to change your privacy in the Tumblr Support Center! This is a lot more organized than my shitty graphics that I put together in Microsoft Paint, using screenshots with a really weird language-mix.

But it’s not working! What am I doing wrong?

Absolutely nothing! This is the second issue users have run into. At the moment, there is NO WAY TO ACTUALLY ACCESS the privacy dashboard after clicking OK in the initial message. At least no way that I know of.

The second problem:

The privacy dashboard cannot be accessed. When you follow the instructions on the support page to go to your privacy dashboard, you will be redirected to the Oath website, Tumblrs mother company. If you want to access your Tumblr privacy dashboard, you’ll be asked to log in with your Tumblr information.

On the Oath page, you can click on your Tumblr Privacy dashboard – and will be redirected right back to the page you started out from. Basically, you’re being led in neverending circles, never actually able to access the page to change your settings on.

Tips for later

In case this will somehow start working properly at some point, and you want to change the settings without having to click a bazillion options seperately, there’s a script for Chrome to opt out of every option at once, made by @buckysaur

the-mad-duchess:

Tumblr’s at it again, thanks to the new European Privacy Laws. There’s probably nobody who will read this, but it pissed me off so much that I decided to make a post about it. (Ignore the weird language mish-mash, depending on your country the language might differ.)

OK, so many of us get this screen when we try to access our dash:

Realise how the ‘OK’ button is a nice, attention-grabbing blue? If you’re like me, you’re not exactly into reading a 100 pages document and tend to just click it.

My tip? DONT. Instead click on ‘Manage Options’ right next to it:

Now you’ll see this page:

Still pretty harmless, right? That ‘Accept’ button is looking really attractive right now. Instead, click on Verwalten (Probably something like ‘Manage Options’ or something in english) and you’ll get to this page:

Now that’s not too bad, right? I just switched all the buttons to ‘off’, because I’m jealously guarding my personal information and don’t want Tumblr to go off and do who knows what with it. Looks like we’re done! But wait: There’s a SHOW option.

When we click on that one, what we will get is this:

A HUGE list with OVER 300 ENTRIES of companies that can use your data by default if you’d just clicked ‘OK’ on that very first page. Coincidence that this list is hidden that much? Me thinks not. They’re all switched on by default, but I am still a petty bitch that doesn’t want to give out her data, so I switched them all off. All 300+ of them. There is no option to switch them all off at once, and even if you disable all the options above, the companies are still switched on.

(If you wonder how i got that number, I copied the list into excel and looked at the cell number. No way am I actually counting all those entries)

A slightly more informative post about the new privacy settings 🙂